#asae10 Deconstructing Social Media Guidelines

24Aug10

Live-blogging from session #asae10

Goals

1. One policy for staff and volunteers

The simplest thing that could possibly work, the more policies you have the more you need to maintain.

2. Platform Agnostic

Based on individual behavior, not behavior on the site

3. This compliments your existing policies

Not trying to cover everything

4. Policy about Do’s not Don’ts

Here’s how you CAN operate in these social media policy. If you have policies about what you can’t do, you’re never going to be able to police it.

What people in the room are concerned about:

Negative Comments
Patients without great outcomes will starting talking about them
Anti-trust
Protesters
Consent/Privacy
Intellectual Property
Trademark Infringement
Trolling
Control/Fear

The positive side is that you get the opportunity to respond. If you aren’t listening, then you won’t be prepared when someone does say something negative. Because they will say something negative. Teach your employees how to respond when someone does say something bad.

Many associations have questions they need to answer in their policies, here are some you should be addressing:

What’s official?
Who responds?
Who enforces?
Who answers questions?
What’s confidential? Private?
What are your special risks?
How can you get there?

Next we discussed a sample of social media guidelines at our tables. We talked about horror stories, offered advice about communication consolidation and we rated each of the individual policies about whether or not it was “Too Lenient,” “Just Right,” or “Too Strict.” The room discussion then shifted to specific questions.

All in all a great session. So far the best I’ve been to.

And for a quick plug, the presenters have a whitepaper that they’ve written called “Social Media, Risks and Association Policies.”